Part VI

Xander tossed the car keys to Faith as they walked across the brightly lit parking lot to where their car had been left. “This time you can drive, and I’ll do the navigating!”

“You’re going to let me drive?” asked Faith. “What ever happened to: ‘never again, even if there is an apocalypse happening!’?”

“I’m making an exception.” Xander reached the car and moved around to the passenger side. “If we get lost again, and wind up anywhere near anything even remotely secret, I’m thinking that those Air Force guys will probably just lock us up, and throw away the keys. They’re so paranoid, I bet they’ve bugged us!”

He watched Faith carefully to make sure that she got the message, and saw her grinning in the overhead lighting. “Too bad you insisted on separate rooms: we could have really given the guys with the microphones a good show.”

Xander sighed. “Faith, would you please just stop doing that.”

“Not till I’m dead, Xan.”

“Enough already, just unlock the car.”

It was after midnight when they got to their hotel. The desk clerk told them that the hotel had let one of the rooms that they’d had reserved go to someone else, and that there was only one room available now.

“Please tell me it has two beds,” said Xander.

“It has two beds, sir,” said the desk clerk.

“I guess we’ll have to take it.”

The clerk took Xander’s credit card, and swiped it through a reader before he prepared a couple of key cards for him and Faith. Xander wondered if the clerk was really telling the truth about there only being one room available, or if the Air Force had something to do with this, forcing him and Faith into one room so they could listen in to anything that they might have to say to each other.

Jack and Teal’c climbed into the back of the surveillance van. “Anything?” he asked Carter.

“No, Sir,” said Carter, “but I’m pretty sure that they know that we’re listening to them.”

“Why’s that?”

“Russell made some comments about ‘giving the listeners a hard-on’ before they went to sleep. Harris didn’t seem to appreciate them.”

“Did they say anything of interest?”

“Not really, Sir. Harris seems to have picked up a pile of tourist brochures from the hotel lobby. They mostly talked about what they plan to see tomorrow.”

“Did they make any decisions?”

“No, Sir.”

“Rats. If we knew where they were going, we could get some surveillance set up ahead of time.”

“Most of the places they were discussing will be very difficult to follow them in, without having our people spotted, and it will be just as hard to bug them.”

“Okay, Teal’c and I will take the rest of the night watch. You and Jonas go get some sleep.”

Xander felt something tickling at his ear. He batted at it with his hand, but hit nothing. He felt it again, like someone was gently blowing against it. “Go away Ahn, I’m still sleeping.”

“Time to get up, sleepyhead,” breathed a voice in his ear.

“I’m tired. I’ll give you your orgasms later.”

“Is that a promise?” Faith asked brightly.

Xander bolted upright in his bed. “Oh god! Faith! Don’t do that to me!”

Faith pouted at him. “Does that mean you won’t give me orgasms? Anya spoke very highly of your abilities in that area.”

It felt like someone had stabbed a knife into his gut. “Don’t,” he snarled out. “Just…don’t.”

Faith realized that she’d gone too far with her teasing. “Sorry Xan. You still miss her, don’t you?”

“Yeah… It’s only been a couple of months.”

“I’ll try to lay off with the flirting…a little bit.”

“Don’t put too much of a strain on yourself,” said Xander. “Just give me a chance to wake up, first; know who I’m talking to.”

“I’ve been up for over an hour,” said Faith. “I even went for a swim in the pool. Get yourself into the shower, and I’ll order us breakfast.”

“We can go to a restaurant,” said Xander. “The room service menu costs twice as much.”

“Yeah, but we saved enough by only taking one room, that we can afford it.”

“I want to get out of here, get some place where we can talk.” Xander started to get out of his bed. “Have you checked for any email yet?”

“Nyah, I thought I’d wait for you.”

“You can check it, while I have my shower, and pass along our news,” said Xander. “Just remember what Willow told us about security…and here I thought she was being paranoid.” He disappeared into the bathroom.

“Good,” said Carter in the surveillance van. She and Jonas had returned just after sunrise. “She’s going to use the computer. I’ll be able to get her password when she logs in. That should help us decrypt the copy I made of their hard drive.”

“How’s that?” asked Colonel O’Neill.

“I installed a key-logger in their computer. It’ll transmit whatever she types to us. That should give us the key we need to decrypt their files. The ones in Russell’s account, anyway.”

“Harris seems to have warned her to be careful.”

“Hmm…” Carter was watching her computer screen. “Looks like she is… She’s logged in to the guest account… Looks like she’s going to do a virus scan…that won’t catch my logger, it’s hardwired into the keyboard…” Her screen suddenly went blank. “What happened?”

Faith smiled when she saw the message displayed on the laptop’s screen: “Unauthorized modification neutralized.” Willow had digressed into a ten minute explanation of how their laptops had been specially modified, with a mixture of high tech and magic, so that they could detect any tampering and deal with it, when she had given them their computer security lecture. Faith had tuned most of it out. All she cared about was that if the computer ever spent any time out of her or Xander’s possession, that she wasn’t to log in to her account until after she had run the virus scan. It seemed that Red’s precautions hadn’t been a waste of time. She was still careful as she typed up a report of her and Xander’s adventure with the Air Force yesterday, being sure that the account she gave of the incident matched with what they had told the Air Force guys. She knew that Willow and Giles would be able to read between the lines and figure out what had really happened. She wasn’t so sure about Buffy, but she had Dawn with her.

She had just encrypted the message, and sent it off into the wilds of the Internet when Xander came out of the bathroom. His hair was still damp, and he was dressed in clean clothes. “You ready for breakfast?” he asked her.

“I was born ready.”

Xander grabbed his keys off the bedside table. “Let’s go.”

They passed by the hotel’s own restaurant, and went out to the parking lot for their car. Xander drove them a couple of miles before he started looking for a place to eat. He selected an International House of Pancakes. Once inside they picked a table that gave them a good view of the door, so they could see if anyone followed them in. “Okay, it’s probably safe to talk now.”

It wasn’t quite safe. A waitress came by with a pot of coffee, and menus for them. Faith let her fill their cups, and then leave again before she asked her first question. “So… do you think that they know the girl’s a Slayer?”

Xander was already looking over his menu. “If they know about Slayers, they’d probably already know who we are, and what we’re doing here. I don’t think that could be it.”

“So why were they so hot to detain us?”

“It could be just like they said,” said Xander. “Major Fraiser spotted us following her, and they’re afraid that we’re some sort of terrorists or something. Once they got a look at the stuff in the trunk, they just think we’re nuts.”

“But they found the compass too,” said Faith. “O’Neill took it into his house. They must know it pointed at the girl.”

“Hmm.” Xander flipped to another page in the menu. “What about that Teal guy? Is he some sort of demon?”

Faith shook her head. “I don’t think so. He just felt…different. Not demony, but not entirely human either. I got the same feeling from that Jonas guy too, but not as strong.”

The waitress came back and asked if they were ready to order. Faith asked for the Country Fried Steak & Eggs, and Xander ordered the Belgian Waffles with Strawberries.

“What was she doing in the base?” asked Xander, after she had gone again.

“It’s been over a month since she got her power,” said Faith. “Maybe she told her mother about it. Her mother’s a doctor…she might have wanted to run tests.”

“So, the Air Force knows that there’s something different about her, but they don’t know why.”

“If we’re lucky.”

“How often do we get lucky?” asked Xander.

“World’s still here, isn’t it?” asked Faith.

“Point.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“I think we’ll just play tourist for a couple of days,” said Xander. “See if the Air Force guys get tired of following us around.” He nodded toward a couple of men who had just entered the restaurant. They both looked fit, and clean-cut, like they had just changed out of their uniforms. They took a table near Xander and Faith. “So, what do you say we start with the Garden of the Gods this morning?”

“Alright,” said Faith. “Then we can do the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo this afternoon.”

“The zoo?”

“Sure,” said Faith. “I haven’t been to a zoo since…well, pretty much never.”

“I don’t know. Last time I went to the zoo there was that hyena thing.”

“What are the chances of something like that happening again?”

“You know you just jinxed us, don’t you?”

They spent the next couple of days visiting Colorado Springs area tourist traps, snatching bits of conversation about their real purpose, and making plans during the few moments when they were sure that they had temporarily lost their tails. They quickly identified half a dozen different people who were following them around in pairs. They even gave them names: the two men who had followed them into the IHoP were Tom and Jerry; another couple, an Hispanic man with a red headed woman, were Ricky and Lucy; a tall man with a shorter companion, were Bud and Lou. Those six were so obvious that they were sure that there were more that they hadn’t spotted.

A few times they’d gone shopping—an activity that Xander had objected to loudly and often. He’d follow Faith from store to store, carrying her bags while she tried on various outfits, and asked his opinion of them. This was an activity that Xander found particularly excruciating, because Faith’s taste in clothing was provocative at its mildest. Watching Faith model leather pants that fit her like a second skin was an activity that Xander would have enjoyed a couple of months earlier, and he hoped that, given enough time, he would come to enjoy it again, but right now it was something that he really didn’t want to do. He didn’t have to pretend not to be having fun.

Xander settled himself on his bed in their hotel room, with the remote for the TV in one hand, and the card showing what movies were available in the other.

Faith came out of the bathroom, changed into a fresh set of clothes. She grabbed her red leather jacket. “Want to come shopping with me?”

Xander grimaced. “Not tonight.” He held up the card. “The Two Towers is starting in ten minutes.”

“You’re as bad as Andrew.”

“Not hardly,” said Xander. “At least I know this stuff is fantasy.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Faith. “I sometimes feel like I lived through that Helms Deep shit.”

“Go,” said Xander. “Shop. Let me watch my movie.”

“Alright. See you later.” She pulled on her jacket and left the room.

Faith wandered through the mall, seeming to window shop, but her senses were really elsewhere, monitoring the area around her. She had spotted Lucy and Ricky following her long ago, and her instincts were telling her that there was someone else. Someone she hadn’t spotted yet, but she knew they were there.

She had scouted this mall the day before, learning its layout. It had three levels, with an open atrium in the centre. She wandered back and forth, spending time in stores, starting on the ground floor, and working her way up to the top. She could see Ricky and Lucy, and her instincts told her where their backup had to be, even if she couldn’t see them. A reversal in her direction of travel guaranteed that everyone was behind her when she threaded her way through a crowd of people near the elevators. She moved suddenly to the railing, and climbed over it. She dropped down, catching the ledge to swing herself onto the level below her. She shed her red jacket, and shoved it into some potted shrubs. The people following her over the last couple of days had only seen her in brightly coloured, and tight fitting clothes. The shirt she was wearing tonight was grey, and hung loosely on her body. She walked briskly toward the exit to the parking garage. She pulled her hair back into a pony tail as she moved, and tied it in place. Any of the people following her would probably have trouble recognizing her from a distance now.

She was alone when she reached the parking garage, so she broke into a sprint, running across it to the other side. She climbed a railing and jumped down into the night.

“What do you mean ‘They lost her!’?” Jack had just gone to bed when his phone woke him, and he was not in a good mood.

“They lost her, Sir!” said Major Carter. “Team two followed Russell to a mall, and she vanished.”

“What about Harris?” asked Colonel O’Neill.

“He’s still sitting in their hotel room, watching The Two Towers.”

“Alert the people watching the Fraiser house,” said Colonel O’Neill. “Get everyone there.”

Cassie was bored.

She had been stuck in the house for days. She hadn’t been allowed to go anywhere on her own. Even when she had been allowed out to spend time with friends, she’d had an escort. They’d tried to find her someone who wouldn’t look too out of place with her friends, but the female SF, a Lieutenant Mills, who had been assigned to shadow her, still put a crimp in her style. Not that she, or her friends, were engaged in anything all that questionable, but the presence of the young woman that everyone knew was almost a cop, definitely put a damper on things.

Cassie’s shadow had explained to her that she wasn’t interested in busting anyone who might be smoking a little weed, or underage kids drinking beer, or anything like that, but no one had wanted to take the chance. Not that Cassie did any of those things herself, but she knew kids who did, and she found that she wasn’t welcome anymore in a lot of places if her shadow tagged along.

In some ways, it was worse than being grounded. At least the few times her mom had grounded her, Cassie had known that she had done something wrong. This time, she knew that she hadn’t. And this time she knew that she needed to be out there.

Faith jogged through the darkness. Even if she hadn’t managed to lose whoever was following her in the mall, she knew that there was no way that anyone could still be following her, and not be noticed. It was nearly impossible to follow a jogger without being seen. She made her way toward Mountain View Lane.

Cassie listened to the house. She could hear her mother sleeping, and her shadow in the guest room. She knew that there were more people watching her house from outside, but she had a pretty good idea where they were; she knew that she could evade them. She quietly left her room and went down the hall to the bathroom. A large tree hid its window from the watchers on the street. She eased it open.

Faith approached the neighbourhood cautiously, sticking to the shadows. The Slayer was a night hunter: she was nearly impossible to see, when she wanted to stay hidden. She had spotted the surveillance vans watching the house, and she had seen other people—some that she recognized from the people who had been following her and Xander—that were trying to remain unseen in the dark. She worked her way closer to the Fraiser house. Tonight was just supposed to be a quick recce, to take a look at the place, see if there was a way get to it without the Air Force grabbing them. It didn’t look promising.

She caught a glimpse of swaying branches in a tree that grew beside the house. There was no wind, and the branches didn’t move the way they would if there had been a breeze. They moved the way they would if someone was climbing through them. She grinned to herself: none of the newbies were able to stay in at night for very long. They all felt a need to be out hunting. It was hard for a Slayer to resist it. Keeping it in check had been the hardest part of her time in prison.

Cassandra dropped out of the tree, into the neighbour’s yard where she was hidden by a fence, and some bushes. She stayed motionless for a full minute before she started to move, staying in the shadows, unseen by any of the watchers guarding the house. Their attention was focused outward, looking for people trying to sneak in, not out. Faith thought that Cassandra moved well, and was showing more restraint than she ever would have at that age. Most of the newbies would have simply sprinted away, trusting their speed to get them away from anyone who might try to follow them. This girl had the patience to use stealth.

It had been harder to get clear of her house without being seen than Cassie had expected. There seemed to be more people watching it tonight than there had been in the past. It also occurred to her that getting back inside without getting caught would be tougher than getting out. She hadn’t really thought about that before she left.

She came out of hiding after travelling a couple of blocks from her home. She moved openly out onto the sidewalk, and picked up her pace a bit. There was a lot of ground that she wanted to cover before she got back home. She figured that she could check out the Crystal Valley, and Fairview cemeteries, and still get back home before dawn.

She was only a mile from home when she first noticed it: a feeling that someone was following her. She looked, but she couldn’t see anyone. She started moving a little faster, her brisk walk changing to a jog. She kept looking back from time to time. She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was someone behind her, but try as she might, she couldn’t spot them.

Faith’s smile grew as she followed Cassandra. She obviously knew that she was being followed. It had taken all of Faith’s skill to keep from being seen. Her admiration was tempered a bit by how Cassandra had reacted, though. The smart thing for her to do would have been to head back home, or failing that, for someplace crowded. Instead she was reacting…well, pretty much the way Faith would have herself. If it had been something nasty following her, heading into the cemetery wasn’t really all that bright. It showed that she had more confidence in her ability to handle herself than a newly called Slayer should. One of the girls that the old Council had been training, almost from birth, might have felt that way, but most of them had been killed by the First. Kennedy was one of the few girls who’d had much Council training who had made it as far as Sunnydale, and Faith had always felt that she had an inflated opinion of just how good she was.

Cassandra slowed down as she moved between the headstones, pausing from time to time to take a closer look at some of them. She lingered long enough at one or two that Faith thought that she might know the people who had been buried there. Faith took a look at the stones that had attracted Cassie’s attention, and saw that they belonged to Air Force personnel.

Cassie had had enough. She looked around. She knew the area: she’d wandered through this cemetery enough times in the last month. She had a choice of escape routes, if things went wrong. She trusted her new speed would get her away from nearly anyone. She still hadn’t spotted her pursuer, but whoever it was had gotten closer since she’d entered the cemetery. She turned back toward where she knew her follower had to be. “Show yourself!”

“Hey!” A form separated from the shadows, closer to her than Cassie would have thought possible. How had she gotten that close?

Cassie was surprised that it was a girl…a girl that she’d seen through the window from Jack’s living room. “Who are you?”

“Faith, and you?”

“You’re the one following me. You don’t know my name?”

“Okay, so you’re Cassandra Fraiser.”

“Why are you following me?”

Faith shrugged. “I just want to talk to you.” She wandered over toward a headstone, and hopped up onto it. She sat there looking at Cassie for a moment before she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket, and took one out. She used a lighter from another pocket to light it. She held the pack out toward Cassie. “You smoke?”

Cassie shook her head. “What do you want to talk about?”

Faith blew out a cloud of smoke. “The changes you’ve been feeling over the last couple of months.”

“What changes?”

Faith grinned at her. “Oh, you know: you’re stronger, faster, you’ve got this weird compulsion to wander through cemeteries after dark.”

“What do you want to know about it?”

“I’m not here to ask you about it,” said Faith. “I’m here to tell you what’s happened to you.”

“You know?”

“Of course. You’re one of us now.”

“One of who?”

“A Slayer.”

“A what?”

“A Slayer. Like me. Like a hundred or more other girls scattered around the world.”

“So what’s a Slayer?”

“This really works better when some guy with a stuffy English accent says it,” said Faith, “but here goes: ‘The world is older than you know, and contrary to popular myth, it didn’t start out as a paradise. Demons ruled the Earth, but in time they lost their purchase on this world, and the way was made for mortal creatures, for man. But some vestiges of the old ones remained, certain magics, certain creatures, and vampires.’”

“Vampires?” asked Cassie.

“Yep, vampires. It sounds silly, I know, but they’re real.”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be taking some medication?”

Faith sighed. “It’s too bad that Colorado Springs seems to be dead, as far as the undead are concerned. This was the point where my first Watcher tossed me a stake, just as a vamp came up out of the ground in front of me.”

“Watcher?”

“Those stuffy English guys I mentioned earlier. Most of them got blown up, back before Christmas.”

“Blown up?”

“Yeah, there was this thing, called the First Evil. It had a guy working for it who appreciated the destructive power of C4. Most demons are stuck in the middle ages when it comes to weapons…the ones that don’t just use teeth and claws. Of course part of that’s because they tend to be pretty immune to things like bullets.”

“Okay, let’s suppose for a moment that you aren’t on drugs, or you shouldn’t be taking medication. How do I figure into this?”

“Okay, stuffy English voice again: ‘For as long as there’s been demons, there has been the Slayer. One girl in all the world—’”

“I thought you said there were a hundred of us.”

“Yeah, now there are. Before a couple of months ago, there were only two.”

“Still more than one.”

“Yeah…that happened about six years ago, instead of a Chosen One, there was a Chosen Two.”

“Chosen Two?”

“Let me finish. Where was I? Oh yeah: ‘One girl in all the world, a Chosen One. One girl with the strength and skill to hunt the demons, to stop the spread of their evil. She is the Slayer.’”

“So now I’m one of these Slayers.”

“Yep.”

“This is nuts.”

“I know.”

“So, how did I wind up a Slayer. Who chose me?”

“We don’t know.” Faith shrugged. “The Powers that Screw Us, random chance, something else…all we know is that this time, you heard the call, and you chose to answer ‘yes.’ That’s something that none of the Slayers before you ever had a vote on.”

“Heard the call?” asked Cassie.

“Yeah,” said Faith. “Are you ready to be strong?”